Tired of uninspiring, consumptive, toxic homes? Tired of the traffic jams, ugly mini-malls, crowded burbs and urban sprawl? Then check out Project Outrage from Slow Home. Sign their online declaration. Join others in voicing your disdain for the bad development. It's a cool project, and if nothing else, a great example that people are finally realizing how bad our housing and community planning really is, and are standing up for better.
Modern farmhouse sounds like an oxymoron, but I've seen more than a few great looking modernist takes on the American homestead. One of my favorites is Farmhouse One, by the architecture firm of Durkee, Brown, Viveiros and Werenfels. It's a simple, traditionally inspired Rhode Island farmhouse with modern twists. Take a look.
And if you're in to modern farmhouses you'll also be pleased to know there's a great blog dedicated to the genre - the appropriately named Farmhouse Modern. It's definitely worth a look (I found it on the LiveModern Blog Directory, where Future House Now is also listed).
If you want to completely overdose on cool modern farmhouses, pick up the book Farm Houses: The New Style by Neill Heath. It features the houses I mentioned above, and many more, in 185 full color pages. Great book.
Image credits - Durkee, Brown, Viveiros & Werenfels site, Amazon.com Listing
Just a couple of quick things:
The wonderful blog DO Research has closed shop - it is already missed. The upside is they've bought land and are building a Flatpak. I am wildly jealous!
Read the story behind the sea container Holyoke Cabin on the Hive Modular blog. So cool.
Skinny Japanese Houses on eye candy (via Things Magazine). Only in Japan [sigh].
The amazingly hip Alan Family Happy New House is complete. Check it out in The New York Times. It turned out just like the renderings - very, very cool. It shows you just how much you can do with a remodel.
I just picked up a good book, Small Eco-houses. Loaded with interesting, green, modern homes from all over the world. Two thumbs up!
image credit - Amazon.com listingA week ago or so the good folks at DO Research posted a nice pic of a new weeHouse they drove by. I think it must be the Oeschger house shown on the Alchemy site. Sure looks like it.
I've never been to the Twin Cities but it occurs to me that most of my favorite modernist architecture and related firms and websites are based there:
DO Research - A favorite Minneapolis-based modernist blog
rosenlof/lucas - the hippest modern landscaping duo going, with a cool blog to boot
Alchemy Architects - you cannot resist the appeal of their weeHouses
Flatpak - I drool over these Eamesish beauties
City Desk Studio - recently in Dwell, awesome Skyway Retreat
Bark Design - I'm in love with Doris
Hive Modular - The B-Line is an instant classic modern prefab
If you're into rammed earth building, don't miss this blog: Rammed Earth is for Everyone. You can't beat the enthusiasm of that name! The site highlights rammed earth projects all around the world, offers nice Youtube and Flickr finds, and has a great selection of links in its sidebar. It's proprietor is a rammed earth consultant who shares both interesting technical information as well as an intriguing and thought provoking world view. Definitely worth a look if you're an earth building enthusiast and/or you find yourself pondering the nature of man's impact on the Earth on a regular basis.
Via Earth Architecture (of course!).
On Saturday I was hanging around the architecture section of my local Barnes & Noble, looking for something new. I found a nice book on houses by Tom Kundig of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects. I also just caught this post on Shedworking covering several of the firm's brilliant cabin-like houses.
That's wonderful. I love the way the house rests on its site, half hidden, with creeping vines growing all over it. I hate big ugly garages hanging off the side of a house, parasitic, distorting proportions, so I was delighted to see this house with the garages tucked neatly underneath, buried into the slope of the landscape. No yard either - excellent!
"The form is essentially a cast-in-place concrete box, intended to be a strong yet neutral background that provides complete flexibility to adapt the space at will." - OSKA site
I got really fired up this morning after I read a great post in architect Greg La Vardera's blog. In "Our Remodern Movement - the tipping point?" Greg suggests that now might finally be the time for modernist homes to find a place in the mainstream. I really hope so. I see the momentum. And I believe in "tipping points." I know exactly what the tipping point was for me personally, the one thing that got me really excited about modern homes. I picked up a copy of Dwell at the newsstand for the first time, the April/May 2005 issue with Charlie Lazor's Flatpak house on the cover.
I had always been interested in homes. I always dreamed of something better and more exciting than the standard fare of suburban cul-de-sacs, though I wasn't totally hooked on modern yet. But when I saw this cover, with a real family in a cool-ass house, it was like a lightning bolt. I can't tell you how badly I'd like to live in a Flatpak. It's one of the top three contenders for me. It just fits me and my family so perfectly. When the time finally comes to really build a new home I will be giving them a call to talk.
It's funny though, how "weird" most people think modernist homes are. My mother said "you want to live in a white box?" with a look on her face that was pure disbelief. Talking houses with some neighbors I could detect their nervous smiles when I mentioned concrete and steel, as in "uh, okay, sure, as long as it's not next door to my house." And look at the real estate markets. That's all you need to know. You don't see a lot of developers building modernist spec homes. Just pick up a real estate magazine and thumb through it for a minute. How many cool modernist homes will you find in the listings. Maybe one or two in a hundred page book. And they're mostly really big, expensive houses, probably built in the eighties after watching too many episodes of Miami Vice. Good, simple, modern homes for real families are hard to come by. Your best bet is a fifties ranch. Even those are a minority in the market compared to the grand total of everything else.
But I think Greg is right. This is the right time. Dwell has been so successful that some other similar publications have started to appear. Blogs like mine are popping up like daisies. Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big House" movement has a lot of followers (because it makes a lot of sense). Or consider John Brown's Slow Home Movement. And green is suddenly king. People finally realize that their choices have a real impact. Now is definitely the time of Less is More, and modernism fits that bill perfectly.
Probably the biggest helper in all of this, in my opinion, is going to be the bursting of the real estate bubble. I say that for one simple reason: it will make people change their view as to what their home really is - a home to live in and not an investment to make a fortune off of. I really believe that people won't/can't build what they really want because they are too hung up on resale value and growing massive equity. I don't know if this attitude caused the housing bubble or vice versa, but either way they combine to create an effect where the resultant high cost of housing distorts our views, closes our minds to new ideas, prices lots of people out of the market for a good home, and places too much power in the hands of developers, not in the hands of consumers where it should be. And so, here we are. With the bubble busting and home prices correcting I think we may also see home buyers making very different decisions about what they want to live in. I know this is the case for my wife and I, and I hope, at least, that this is the case for others.
It's definitely time for America to focus its attention on things like better homes, greener communities, reliable energy, even better communications technology, education and health care. These are the things that make up the infrastructure of this country. We won't have to worry about foreign threats for long if we allow ourselves to fall apart from the inside.
This whole country is at a tipping point, or near one. Modern homes are just a tiny, tiny part of that. We can choose a better way to live without giving up all the really great things we already enjoy.
Better living through design. Work smarter, not harder. Find the holistic solutions.
We can do it.
I was really delighted this afternoon to find a new rolu post waiting for me in my feed reader. I clicked on over (because rolu posts are best enjoyed on their own page) and was absolutely blown away. With all due respect to the many other fine blogs I enjoy reading, to me rolu|dsgn has the most original, interesting, and brilliantly told architecture and design related posts on the web. This latest piece is something special, and I cannot recommend strongly enough that you give it a look.
The post describes an almost daydream of a vision, one of Minneapolis skyways converted to chic modern cabins, that was actually turned into reality by the firm CITYDESKSTUDIO. It's a great story of people connecting through common love of design, of seeing interesting things in unusual objects, and turning inspiration into reality.
Here's a quick look at the project. Read the rolu post for the details.
First sea container homes, now this. Wonderful!
I enjoyed browsing CITYDESKSTUDIO's work on their site. They've done a lot of nice projects. For some reason their kitchens really appeal to me. They're bright and cheerful and clean. I'm a morning person, and kitchens are morning person places. I can easily see myself in any one of them, having banana pancakes and hot tea, and reading rolu posts on my laptop (though I very seriously caution you against mixing maple syrup with keyboards). Take a look at a couple of examples:
Did you see the blue Eames chair? It's like they're reading my mind.
By the way, Matt was incredibly kind to mention Future House Now in his post. I'm not writing this gushing praise as a reciprocal gesture, but I must admit it pleases me endlessly to be included in such a good story in any way.
The rolu blog is my favorite site on the web. I say that in all honesty. If you haven't given it a look yet click on over and say hi. You will not be disappointed.
Image credits - CITYDESKSTUDIO site
I found this new blog, Modern Residential Design, after its proprietor, Nick, left a comment on one of my posts. Boy was I glad! What a cool site. Take a look at a couple of his boss finds ...
The Hughes\Kinugawa House in New Zealand by Andrew Lister. Compact Japanese-inspired beauty. Dig that bath. I can see myself living peacefully here - reading, writing, relaxing.
And the amazingly groovy Casa Calamuchita by Miguel Angel Roca. Love it - just looks like a fun place to hang out with Corona in hand, a bunch of friends around.
Nice blog, Nick. Officially added to the "Favorite Sites" in my sidebar. Keep on finding great stuff for me to drool over.
Image credits - noted architects via Modern Residential Design blog
Just taking a moment to turn your attention to a couple of cool houses featured elsewhere ...
I like this NY Times Magazine slide show of Thomas Phifer and Partners' intriguing Salt Point House. The Times piece just gives you a taste. Look at the slides on the architect's site. The exterior treatment is very unusual but the effect is great. Bravo. I love the interior too. Here's a couple of pics to tease you on over to both sites to look at the rest.
Image Credit - Living Space 21
Image credit - BLIP DesignI'm really in to the Case Study Houses right now. My favorites are the simple ones like CSH#4 (which never got built) and CSH#21. But the more I think about what I want in a place for my family though, the more I start leaning toward something roomier like the the Eames House, CSH#8. I'm also inspired by the sort of retro vibe at DO Research, which always makes me think of the Eames. And I always really dug the Eames furniture, all of it, in a big way.
This documentary short by the Charles and Ray Eames gives you the spirit of the house:
A lot of recent designs evoke the Eames' groove:
Flatpak House from Lazor Office (images from the Flickr set)
EcoContempo 6030 and 6040 by Lavardera (images from LamiDesign Blog) - Greg, leave us a comment - were you inspired by Eames?
Royal Homes Muskoka Modern (images from Royal Homes site). By the way, nice mudroom. My chief gripe about most modern homes - no good entry for muddy feet. Come to Detroit in February and see what I mean.
I'd have said, "build me a house around this ..."
I just found this interesting blog, Where - "a blog about urban places, place-making and the concept of 'place.'" It's relatively new. I saw a link to it on BLDGBLOG. It's good. As much as I write about houses, and the need for better housing in America, the real truth is it's a macro problem we're facing. We don't just need better houses, we need better places. We need smarter cities, we need to tackle sprawl, we need to be able to access our jobs and communities by something other than automobiles, we need green spaces where we live and shop, and we need vital cities where people can live comfortably with higher population densities so we don't have to keep tearing up forests, farmland and coastal beauty.
Today's post on Where is particularly interesting to me. It's about Detroit, and I think it gives a great insight on the unusual dynamics of this city, and why for change to happen Detroit has to follow its own unique path to revitalization. I really enjoyed reading it. This is a blog I'll be watching.
By the way, I've been wanting to post about a great book I picked up a while ago. A Field Guide to Sprawl
You'll learn about and see aerial pics of "Zoomburbs," "Boomburbs," "Category Killers," LULUs," "Privatopias," "Ozoners," "Pods," "Edge Nodes," and more. I'd say I live in a combination "Low Density/Greenfield/Sitcom Suburb" (I hate to say that, but it's true). You won't have any problem recognizing the landscape depicted in this book all around you either, wherever you live in the USA. It's a fabulous and entertaining book with a critical message - planning the greater environment matters, and we're doing it all wrong.
Image credits - Where site and Amazon.com listing
I was looking at Soren Korsgaard's MySpace page. His mood is "happy," he thinks TV is "all crap!" (except for The Office), and his Zodiac sign is Aquarius. He's single. He's six feet tall. His architecture is brilliant.
Soren's MySpace page showcases his work, and has some things I hadn't seen on his website. In particular, I was immediately taken with his Woven House concept.
I asked him about it. He said:
ConceptA house designed as a showcase to promote bamboo as sustainable building material, must be unusual and eye-catching.
Bamboo has been used for making everything from kitchenware to buildings for thousands of years in most Asian countries. Among the many beautiful methods of treating bamboo, highly sophisticated weaving techniques have been developed. Woven house is an attempt to take this tradition and use it in modern architecture and in a much larger scale than anyone have ever seen before. Birds are using weaving for making their nest from materials in their habitats.
Using the unique flexibility and strength of bamboo for weaving a vacation house, that appears futuristic and dynamic and gives a unique architectural experience, where walls, floors and ceiling is one continuously surface, that also can be shaped into sitting areas and shelves.
The woven bamboo surface can be a closed surface or open to let in light.
Location:Can be anywhere in south – and Southeast Asia. Vietnam, China, India, Indonesia. Most importantly in an area where there is a tradition of weaving bamboo, and on a site where Bamboo is growing, so less transport is needed, meaning less impact on nature.
Construction:
Heat shaped construction bamboo is used for making the framework of the building.
Roof is covered with bamboo shingles. Internal walls, floor and ceiling is woven bamboo. And in between there is lots of space for insulation.
So hard to get back into the swing of things. I'm one of those people heavily governed by inertia. When I have momentum I keep it until something slows me down or changes my direction. When I have to build up speed again it goes sooo sloooowly.
To make things easy on myself I'll recap some interesting developments that happened while I was away:
Michelle Kaufmann and her firm MKD introduced a new model of her very green, prefab homes - the mkLotus. As usual, top marks for modern style, sustainable design and materials, and viable prefab. Love the green roof on this one. Via Prefab Wednesday on The Good Human.
Image credit - MKD site
The first straw bale house I ever saw was the (now very famous) Hay Bale (Bryant) House by Rural Studio, Samuel Mockbee's groundbreaking do/learn program at the Auburn University School of Architecture. I was hooked!
I've been a fan of Rural Studio ever since. Sadly, Mockbee passed away a few years ago, but Rural Studio is still going strong. Did you know they've got some blogs going to chronicle their amazing work? Yep, they do! Five of them, in fact.
The blogs give you a great peek at all the hard work that goes into making their projects happen. Since I focus on residential work, my favorite is naturally the Outreach Project $20k House Phase III blog. As the name implies, this is the third in a series of projects aimed at very low cost homes, in Rural Studio's great tradition of building for low income families. Here's some pics I've sampled from the blog's year of posts, to give you a feel for what they're building.
The other blogs are great too. They cover community projects, which is another area that Rural Studio has made amazing contributions to.
I know Rural Studio is very well known, and that I'm not breaking any ground talking about it here. But I wanted to remind everyone that the program is still going strong, and that you can get an up close and personal look inside Rural Studio projects on their great blogs. Go visit them, and leave them a comment, just to show your support.
Here's a nice list of ten things you can do to make your home more eco-friendly, from the Good Human.
1. Use only low-VOC interior paints and wood sealants.
2. Go with spray foam insulation
3. Radiant heat
4. Make sure your windows and doors are sealed.
5. Use compact fluorescent lightbulbs
6. Buy Energy Star Appliances
7. Use reclaimed wood as much as possible
8. Open up those windows to improve indoor air quality
9. Build with finished concrete
10. Install Low flow plumbing fixtures and water filters
Click on over to my buddy Justin's site, materialicio.us, where he's having architecture week! He's been posting up some great houses, many of my favorites, but several I haven't seen before. I really, really, really like this one, the Box House by Nicholas Murcutt.
I can soooo see myself in this picture <sigh>. Nice.
Image credit - NY Times article
Today is a banner day, as architect Greg La Vardera's work and his excellent Vermont Plat House have been featured by the New York Times in the Great Homes section. It's a nice article about great architects who bring quality design to stock home plans, plans you can buy right on the Internet.
Greg does awesome modernist homes. I've mentioned the Vermont Plat House several times on this site. It's a modification of the standard Plat House plan, shown here. What can I say, beautiful house, great plan, amazing look. Soooo cool. It's little wonder this plan is a huge hit.
Here are a couple of other homes from his stock plans that I really like:
The Tray House - really nice floorplan. Absolutely nothing missing in this plan. I'm super picky about floorplans and yet I can't find any faults with it. This house would easily fit right in any suburban neighborhood, where I think modernist houses actually look out of place because everything else looks so McMansionish (at least here in Detroit), and where they are often - sadly - not welcomed by suspicious and closed-minded neighbors and their evil homeowners' associations. I don't mean to insult the design by saying it could fit in such an environment, I just mean this home has a very universal appeal (and as such is very appropriately categorized in Greg's "Zeitgeist House Group" of plans).
The Cube House - a cool three-story design. Another great plan, packing five bedrooms and a study in 2400 square feet! If you have big family this could be a great option. What kid wouldn't want to have one of those rooms on the third floor? I could also fulfill my Star Trek fantasy of belonging to the Borg Collective (where do I plug myself in?). Just kidding - I really love this house. I think I can safely say it's my personal favorite.
There are many others, and Greg introduces new ones from time to time. Check out his Modern House Plans site to see more. And don't miss Greg's great blog for lots of updates on his projects and many great pics of his work.
Want a totally custom home? Greg does that too. Give him a call or drop him a note. He's a super nice guy and a real talent. I think he'd be great to work with.
Congratulations Greg on the great recognition in the NY Times! Pretty cool. Well done.
Image credits - LaMiDesign
Following my enthusiasm for green roofs yesterday, here are some links for more info:
Today I came across a hip blog called Design Spotter, and they had a post on a small rural cabin by the Danish architecture firm Christensen & Co Arkitekter. I clicked on over and was thrilled with what I saw: fresh, modernist designs with a green streak. The houses the firm shows on its site include lots of modest homes for real people. They're really cool looking too, really sharp.
One thing that struck me was how original the floorplans are. When you're talking about modernist homes you see a lot of the same thing, and a lot of it isn't really that good. Christensen has some super layouts. They do small bedrooms too, which you probably know by now is something I'm in favor of as a way of saving space for larger rooms where you do most of the real living.
Here's what they say about their approach to environmentally friendly design:
"Sustainability is no longer a field for pioneers; it has become a legal requirement and consensus in the building process. However, visionary solutions are rarely derived from the mainstream. At CCO our ambitions far exceed the revised building regulations of 1 January 2006. Several of projects are at the absolute forefront in this field."
